The head of the distribution network that delivers electricity to customers in South Australia – the country most advanced renewable grid in terms of wind and solar – says that half of the state’s households now have rooftop PV.
South Australia leads the world in the uptake of wind and solar, with a 75 per cent share over the last year and a target of 100 per cent “net” renewables by the end of 2027. The “net” means that it will export surplus capacity and import at other times, according to need.
Its other complication is the amount of rooftop solar in the local grid, which at times has been equal to the state’s entire electricity demand, which in terms of grid management has created “minimum demand” – of even negative demand – issues that other state-based networks are now starting to deal with.
Andrew Bills, the head of SA Power Networks, says there is no sign of rooftop uptake slowing down.
“In fact, we just got to 50 per cent of households in South Australia now have rooftop solar,” Bills says in the latest episode of Renew Economy’s weekly Energy Insiders podcast.
“It’s gone up like 4% in just the last two months, three months. That’s trend is continuing.”
Big red button
South Australia’s leadership in the uptake of rooftops solar means that it has had to innovate to keep the grid reliable, safe and secure. It started out with a “big red button” that allowed it to switch off household solar if required.
This has now morphed into a system of “flexible exports”, which lifts restrictions on exports for most of the time, but reserves the right to curtail rooftop solar output at certain times
“If you look at the South Australia story, they’ve had to innovate to survive and lead the world in terms of running a network the majority of the time on renewables (and on occasions) rooftop solar,” Bills says.
“It’s a combination of adapting to what’s going on, but then recognizing that you’ve got a plan for how you then can accommodate the growth in that going forward. We’re a bit of a sign as to what other network companies are going to have to deal with in the coming years.”
The rapid growth of household batteries – Bills says that 100 are being installed each day in South Australia as a result of the federal government’s phenomenally popular battery rebate – will change the dynamics of the grid.
And so too will other consumer energy resources such as electric vehicles, and electric loads. But this is where it gets tricky, because networks like SAPN want to innovate in the way these are rolled out and managed, but are largely prevented from doing so because of the strict regulatory divide in Australia’s main grid.
Networks are allowed to supply power to the home, but traditionally have not been allowed any further than the meter box. They have to apply for special permission to “swim outside their line” and install neighbourhood batteries, EV chargers, and generation.
The generation and retail giants that dominate the country’s electricity market are mounting a furious response, desperate to protect their domination of the market. The networks are likely best placed to provide some of the necessary innovation, but unscrambling the eggs is awfully complicated.
The networks, however, are pushing their own barrow to become what’s known as “distsributed system operators”, which they argue will give them more insight and control over rollout of CER, and benefit consumers because the efficiencies can be best exploited. But not everyone is happy about that.
Technology is moving faster
“Technology is moving faster than when we designed the market and the rules, if you go back to the 90s and when competitive markets were introduced,” Bills says.
“That led to the market that we have today, and the rules that govern that. What we’re seeing at the moment is that technology is scrambling that supply chain so the space from which a network monopoly can operate has changed.
And that’s the tension that you’re touching on – at the physical connection into the home, which has got its own form of generation and storage in there, how can we access that? What’s the most economic way to do that for everyone.”
You can hear the full interview with SAPN’s Andrew Bills in the latest episode of the Energy Insiders podcast here.
See also: Energy Insiders Podcast: “We had to innovate to survive”
And: Graph of the Day: The states with the most and the biggest home solar batteries since rebate began
Giles Parkinson is founder and editor-in-chief of Renew Economy, and founder and editor of its EV-focused sister site The Driven. He is the co-host of the weekly Energy Insiders Podcast. Giles has been a journalist for more than 40 years and is a former deputy editor of the Australian Financial Review. You can find him on LinkedIn and on Twitter.